A Doctor in His House

A Doctor in His House
Lilian Darcy

Say it, Scarlett.“We messed it up before. And it wasn’t fun. The contrast between the—between what we had in bed, and the rest—”

He answered slowly, “We were different people, then. In a different situation.”

“Different enough, compared with the people we are now?”

“That weekend …” He leaned closer, looked down at their joined hands, rubbed the pad of his thumb over her knuckles in slow strokes.

“Yes, can we talk about that weekend?” she said.

“We need to.”

How? She sensed it wasn’t going to be easy. The noise level in the beer garden was rising. Hard to tell if the other conversations going on would be a protection or would force them to talk uncomfortably loud.

She stretched forward, almost knocking down her beer, so that their heads were close. Listening distance. Debating distance. Kissing distance, almost.

Almost, but not quite.

Dear Reader,

Several times a year, I drive a particular Australian road which takes me past a massive sprawl of old cars, many of which have been there for more than fifty years. They are now valuable for their rare spare parts, and have become a local tourist attraction. You can see this place and read about it for yourself if you search the internet for “Flynn’s Wreckers Cooma.” When I started writing Scarlett and Daniel’s story, I had no idea that a car yard similar to this one—smaller, though—was going to be important in the story, but it soon emerged as a significant part of Daniel’s past. With Scarlett’s help, he will need to work through his history and deal with the legacy of those cars before they have a hope of building a future together.

This is one of the things I love about writing. Something that starts off as a small detail can take on a major and meaningful role, and you have to wonder if my subconscious knew better than I did, and had been storing up my impressions of Flynn’s wrecking yard all these years.

Scarlett and Daniel had a sizzling encounter several years before this story starts, but it was a classic case of meeting at the wrong time. Now that they’ve found each other again, they soon discover that the same things that broke them apart before could shatter everything a second time. I hope you enjoy their journey.

Lilian Darcy

About the Author

LILAN DARCY has written nearly eighty books. Happily married, with four active children and a very patient cat, she enjoys keeping busy and could probably fill several more lifetimes with the things she likes to do—including cooking, gardening, quilting, drawing and traveling. She currently lives in Australia but travels to the United States as often as possible to visit family. Lilian loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at PO Box 532, Jamison PO, Macquarie ACT 2614, Australia, or e-mail her at lilian@liliandarcy.com.

A Doctor

in His House

Lilian Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Chapter One

It began with a familiar headache, which grew steadily worse as Scarlett drove north to Vermont. She pulled over, swallowed painkillers and kept driving, but ten miles from her brother’s house, before the painkillers could kick in, her vision began to blur as if her eyes were windowpanes and there was water running down the glass.

She almost stopped driving at that point, but by the time she’d found a place to pull over, the water seemed to have stopped running and she could see clearly again. Things didn’t feel quite right. On top of the pain, her brain felt foggy and disconnected. But she was less than ten minutes from Andy’s, so it seemed best to keep on going. After all, she’d had these spells before.

The symptoms had been milder those other times, though. Self-diagnosis followed by several tests to rule out more serious options had settled on migraine. The spells always passed before they cost her any significant time at work.

And before they forced her to question the way she was living her life.

Today, the real trouble hit two miles from her destination, and this time there was no warning. The whole world just keeled over like a ship run aground, except she knew the problem wasn’t with the world, it was inside her head. Even though she was wearing chunky sunglasses with dark lenses, the daylight felt so bright that it blinded her, and her senses were scrambled and out of her control.

No question about waiting for a safe place to pull over now.

The safe place had to be right here, because another five seconds at the wheel and she would crash. She couldn’t see, could barely move … She just managed to brake hard, bring the car to a halt and kill the engine, a couple of hundred yards from the Radford town boundary, and she could only hope she was on the shoulder not the road.

Then she rolled the window down and sat.

Fought the dizziness and pain.

Waited, with her hands gripping the top of the steering wheel and her forehead pressed hard against it, for the moment when she would feel well enough to leave the car, or find the phone that lay in her purse.

But the moment didn’t happen. If she tried to open her eyes, all she saw was painful, blinding brightness. If she moved an inch, the world tilted and rolled. She groped for her purse, but it was out of reach on the floor of the passenger seat where it must have slid when she’d braked so suddenly.

She lost track of time, although it must have been fifteen minutes or more. It felt like forever, a terrifying, featureless landscape of unraveling minutes in which all she could do was to stay motionless, keep breathing and think about what had brought her to this point. Andy had been right in his older-brother concern about her stress levels and working hours, and his insistence that she listened to Dad too much. This trip to Vermont was meant to signal a shift in her priorities, but her body was telling her that it had come too late.

Cars went past. She heard the whoosh of the air and the hum of their engines. No one slowed or stopped. Maybe they thought she was taking a phone call or checking an address. The painkillers she’d taken earlier began to work and the dizziness eased a little. She thought again about trying to reach for the purse.

But before she could make the move, she heard the sound of tires popping on gravel, the rumble and surge of an automatic transmission shifting gears and the slam of a car door.

Even her hearing had gone haywire, because she couldn’t tell which direction any of it was coming from. Behind her? Far side of the road? She didn’t know whether to call out or stay silent.

She heard footsteps crunching on the gravel shoulder. They stopped beside her open car window. A man cleared his throat. “Everything okay here, ma’am?” The voice was gravelly and slow and faintly threatening. Again, she didn’t know what to do. Wish it would go away, or ask it for help?

“Um, yes, just resting my eyes,” she lied, to buy a little time. Maybe in a few seconds she could summon the ability to open her eyes and move enough to look at him, see what kind of a man he was, whether he looked as if she could trust him.

She tried it, letting a slit of vision appear between her lids, but the light and blurring hit with merciless speed and she couldn’t see a thing.

There was a pause. The voice stayed silent, but the feet didn’t move. Then the man spoke again, deliberate and slow. “I’m a Vermont state trooper, ma’am. You’re going to need to look at me, and show me your driver’s license.”

The woman with her head and arms on the steering wheel didn’t move, in response to Daniel’s request.

He couldn’t see her face at all, couldn’t tell how old or young she was, or what she looked like. Dark hair with gleaming golden lights fell around her head and onto the wheel, as effective as a deliberate disguise. He could see the frame of her dark glasses, but on a summer afternoon those were hardly a sinister attempt at concealing her identity.

She seemed a little on the thin side, the knobs of her backbone visible through a stretchy cream-colored top, as well as the faintest outline of a light blue bra. Below that, she wore a filmy patterned skirt.

She was in her twenties or thirties, he decided. The skin on her hands was smooth and soft. Her nails were neat and clean and bare of polish. The clothing looked clean and summery and of good quality, suited to the late-model car she was driving and the warm July afternoon. A chunky purse lay on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and a bottle of water had rolled against the seat back.

Nothing out of place, except for the fact that she didn’t move.

He assessed the situation. She could be on the point of passing out from drink or drugs. She could be mentally ill. She could be working some kind of a scam, luring passing motorists to stop and offer help, at which point her accomplices would appear out of the undergrowth for a gunpoint robbery. Daniel had been a hospital security guard in New York City for three years, then a police officer in New York and a state trooper here in Vermont for a total of five. He’d seen all of these scenarios and worse.

“Are you ill, ma’am?” he asked, after weighing the wording of the question in his mind.

“Yes, a migraine. A bad one.”

“I’d like to show you my ID.”